talk nerdy to me
by moirariordan
Summary: "I would've gone to bat for you," Bellamy says, "if it'd gone the other way." (bellamy's a professor. clarke digs it. nerdy sex verse.)
1. Chapter 1

The thing is, it'd seemed really cute last night. The whole "mysterious" schtick, like, three martinis in, Clarke had thought it was a brilliant idea to be all "no, you can't have my number, if you really wanna see me again then you're gonna have to work for it," giggle, hair flip, et cetera. Now in the light of day, it's just dumb.

"You didn't give him your number?" Octavia sounds absolutely aghast. "Dude."

"I know." Clarke muffles her moan in a pillow. "Did I tell you about his hands? He had really, _really _nice hands."

Octavia snaps her gum and looks disapproving. "Did you at least tell him your last name? Or get his?"

"No." Clarke groans again. "Oh my God, I'm the worst."

"This is why you haven't gotten laid in six months." Octavia reaches over and pats Clarke's shoulder, sort of awkwardly. She's not the best at physical affection, Clarke thinks fondly. "Hey, look on the bright side! Maybe he secretly followed you home or something."

Clarke snorts. "Yeah. Hopefully."

It's possible, she guesses. Like, in a non-creepy way. Bellamy had mentioned he had family in town, so chances are he'll be around campus—which isn't a huge one, thankfully. Clarke bites her lip, trying not to fall headfirst into a romantic fantasy of running into him on the quad, preferably in front of all her friends, with Finn stewing in angry jealousy somewhere off to the side. Because for real, that was the only thing missing from last night.

(He has really nice hands, okay. There'd been a corner booth involved. Her underwear had been sacrificed to the cause. God, she really, really should have given him her number.)

"Or hey, maybe my brother could help!" Octavia says cheerfully. "He's pretty good at computer stuff, he could probably find Mr. Handsy on facebook for you."

"What exactly can your brother do that the search bar can't?" As if Clarke hasn't already tried that. Twice. Whatever.

"I don't know. He found our birth dad like that." Octavia shrugs. "You're still coming to lunch, right? It's on B and me."

"Sure," Clarke says gloomily.

Octavia pats her shoulder again. "Don't worry," she says sympathetically, "even if you don't find him, it's not like he's the only hot guy in the world."

Clarke sighs forlornly and climbs off her bed to get dressed. She's not sure Octavia's really grasping how phenomenal the hand thing was.

Octavia gets increasingly excited as lunch draws closer and closer; she and her brother are obviously the kinds of siblings that show affection through insults, and hers have been getting meaner and meaner for weeks.

"Ugh, I swear," Octavia says in disgust, looking up from her phone. "He's even worse than you are. What a dweeb."

"What? Is that him?" Clarke asks curiously.

"Yeah. Apparently he met a girl. He's being super dorky about it." Octavia rolls her eyes, but the grin on her face as she texts him back kind of ruins the effect. "He can't find the dorm either."

"Tell him to look for the statue," Clarke says absently, turning her attention back to the mirror, determined to finish straightening her hair before the mysterious brother B gets there. "Hey—can I borrow that blue scarf? I've got all these damn hickeys on my neck."

"Yeah, sure," Octavia says casually, jumping up to squint out the window. She laughs. "Oh my God, he's just wandering around like an idiot." She pounds on the glass. "Hey! Dumbbell!"

Clarke watches in amusement as Octavia waves at somebody outside, hurriedly tapping out another text, practically vibrating in excitement. "Is he out there?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna go let him in." Octavia grins. "You almost ready?"

Clarke waves her off. "I will be," she says, "go on." Octavia smiles again and scampers away.

She skips makeup and grabs Octavia's scarf, winding it carefully around her neck, closing her eyes momentarily against the sense memory of Bellamy's teeth on her throat. Honestly—she'd much rather spend the rest of her Sunday in bed, obsessively Googling and berating herself, but never let it be said that Clarke is a bad friend, so lunch with Octavia and her nerdy brother it is.

Doesn't he write textbooks or something? She thinks O mentioned something about that. She knows he just finished grad school for history, "like Roman-y stuff, I dunno," Octavia had said. Clarke's not sure what "Roman-y stuff" is exactly, and she's wondering if that means he studies the Roman empire or the Romani people as she struggles to tug her boots up over her calves, which is why she doesn't look up right away when Octavia bursts back into the room.

"—can't believe you did that," Octavia says, happy and loud, and Clarke looks up, and promptly loses her balance and falls right off the futon and into a heap on the floor. "Clarke! Whoa, dude—"

Clarke considers ignoring her, and making this floor her new home, because yup, that's Bellamy. Her three-martini Mr. Handsy is Octavia's big nerdy history textbook brother. She really is the worst.

"Are you okay?" Octavia asks worriedly, and Clarke tentatively looks up. He's staring at her, looking like he's about to either burst into laughter, or run away. She's not sure which option she prefers.

"Uh," she says blankly.

"Clarke," Bellamy says, and moves past Octavia to bend down and offer her a hand up. "You okay there, Princess?"

"Uh," Clarke says again, and feels herself blush bright red. Then she takes his hand and blushes again, because oh my god, _hands_. "Yeah. I, uh, tripped. My heels. Uh."

"Are you drunk or something?" Octavia asks suspiciously.

Bellamy's eyes go to Clarke's scarf, and he smiles knowingly, slow and wry. "Or something," he says, and Clarke winces, turning just in time to see Octavia's eyes widen in horror.

"Octav—"

"_Oh my fucking God_," Octavia screeches, reaching out and hitting both of them. "Oh my God, seriously? Oh my God. You both told me—_oh my God_."

"You always called him 'B', how was I supposed to know?" Clarke exclaims defensively. Octavia covers her face with her hands and moans.

"Okay, this is awkward," Bellamy says, "if I'd known she was your roommate I definitely wouldn't have told you about the—"

Octavia moans again.

"Yeah, we are so the worst," Clarke says.


	2. Chapter 2

If he were any other guy, Clarke'd be on that like white on rice-hot and good at orgasms and apparently he's smart too, like _serious smart_, hoo boy-but he's not just any other guy, he's Octavia's brother, and two weeks after the infamous bar hookup she looks up from her phone and says, "so they're offering Bell the visiting history professor position for next semester," with this kind of jeez, awkward face, and Clarke sighs and thinks, _aaaand another one bites the dust._

They've been kind of existing in a weird limbo place between friends and more anyway, which mostly translates to discreet coffee dates at cafes too far away from campus to walk to. "I would've told you that I was here to interview," Bellamy says, "but I didn't know you were a student when we met, and then, well," and Clarke shakes her head quickly and says, "no, it's fine, I get it," and sips her mocha and tries not to look as disappointed as she feels.

It gets awkward for a second, but then Bellamy shakes his head, like he's irritated, and catches her eye. "We could still be-" then he winces and cuts himself off. "I can't believe I was about to say that," and Clarke laughs, "no but really, I don't want to-"

"Me neither," Clarke says, relieved, and then it's a little better. Maybe she can't have him the way she'd wanted at first, but she can still have him, and that's alright. She can live with that.

So with that new affirmation in mind, Clarke sets about on her new mission of making Bellamy Blake her actual friend, and not just a weird former hook up/"we almost dated" acquaintance, which actually, goes fairly well. He won't start teaching until the spring, of course, but he's started to attend the History department meetings, and he'll usually drop by and bring them food since he's got kind of a weird complex about feeding them ("mother hen," Octavia says sagely, "he's always been paranoid about my calorie intake, you should've seen him when I was little.") and he's also looking for an apartment in town, so she and O are helping him with that too, and it turns out that they have some stuff in common besides orgasms after all.

They bicker almost constantly at first, because he's got strong opinions about, like, everything, which just so happens to be one of those things they have in common, and how is Clarke supposed to just let it go when he's so _wrong_? It's against her nature. Octavia thinks they've started to hate each other and starts shooting them worried looks when she thinks they're not watching, until this one night when Bellamy drives them out to Northampton to shop for a new futon for their room, and they have a big blow out over brands in the middle of Wal-Mart while Octavia pretends she doesn't know them, and it only ends when Clarke stomps her foot on the ground and says, "damn it, it's just a _futon _Bellamy, why does this even matter," and he just goes, "I...have no idea," and then Clarke bursts into laughter at the baffled look on his face, and anyway, Octavia stops worrying after that.

The first time he actually gets angry with her is when he finds out that her mom's the dean, to Clarke's bafflement ("you didn't already know? We have the same last name," she says, and Bellamy rolls his eyes and says, "you've never actually told me your last name, Clarke," and-oh yeah) and he doesn't speak to her for a week. Octavia goes back and forth between sympathizing with him-because yeah, it's not ideal-and being irritated because_ what the fuck, how did you not know her last name Bell, God you're such a _man _sometimes._

It's then that Clarke starts to think she might be in over her head a little, because that week is actually kind of horrible, she can't concentrate on anything and there's a weird twinge in her chest every time she checks her phone for messages and finds none from Bellamy. He forgives her eventually, of course, after she leaves him this embarrassingly sincere voicemail, and texts her back a stubborn not-apology that says,_ okay, i might have been a little dumb about the last name thing,_ but the damage is still done, because now she knows she likes him, now she knows how invested she is. It's not good.

It can't happen though, and so Clarke does her best to ignore it, which is difficult considering that they've made a habit of long, extended text conversations most days, that he always remembers to get a separate thing of veggie fried rice for her when he orders Chinese food, that she'll lose her train of thought because she's too busy staring at the veins on the back of his hands or the freckles on the back of his neck. If this is what pining feels like, like a football player's doing push-ups on top of her chest, she's not into it at all.

It all comes to a head one night when he bribes Octavia into helping him move into his new place, and Clarke comes along because she's a weak, weak woman, and she's unpacking some boxes in the bedroom while he and O bicker about the TV placement in the living room, and comes across a bunch of his old essays from graduate school. She doesn't mean to read them really, she's just curious and intends to just look, but the top one is about Augustus and Clarke remembers Octavia's story about how Bellamy named her, and so before she knows it she's working her way through his thesis and Bellamy's wandering in because it's been like forty-five minutes and they've been wondering if she's dead.

"Oh," he says in surprise, and Clarke blushes because wow, invasion of privacy much, and says, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-" but he just shakes his head and waves it off.

"It's fine, it's not like you can't find it on JSTOR anyway," he says, and lets her take it home with her to finish reading it, in the interest of shared, educational knowledge or something, and Clarke almost wants to laugh because her motivations are not _nearly _that pure or noble. Like-if he only knew, right?

She doesn't have much experience reading academic papers in his field, let alone one as complex as a graduate thesis, that digs deep into the politics of Augustus' reign and, in particular, the influence Octavia wielded over his policies as his adviser, and her divorce and subsequent war against Marc Antony and Cleopatra and her shared grief with her brother over the death of her son and how all the lines between personal and political became so bloody and intense and blurred that even the biographers recording these histories couldn't tell them apart, and Clarke might not grasp some of the more complicated stuff, but she feels moved anyway, from the passion he obviously put into this, from the way he talks about these people like he knows them.

She stays up until two o'clock in the morning to finish reading it and then takes it with her to her classes the next day so she can go back over the parts she didn't understand, dog-earing the pages and underlining the parts that she finds particularly interesting. It becomes a fixture in her backpack, along with her day planner and the little bag of spare pencils and highlighters, and she finds herself taking it out and reading it when she's bored or needs a break from whatever she's _actually _supposed to be studying, scrawling little comments in the margins and a big list of questions, on the very back page, that she means to ask him when she gets the chance.

Octavia almost catches her with it once but Clarke flips it over before she can see the title, ashamed of herself for having such a weird secret but not wanting to really confront it anyway. Not like it matters either way, because a few days later, she's at his place using his kitchen to make some "sorry about the breakup" cookies for Jasper, and her phone goes off while she's washing butter off her hands and, without thinking, she asks him to grab it for her, forgetting that the thesis is in her bag, and-yeah.

"You actually read it?" he asks, sounding surprised, and Clarke nods, glad he's facing away from her so she can make mortified faces at the sink. "You-wow, you..._really _read it."

"Yeah, uh," Clarke says, trying to sound nonchalant, and shuts the water off with her elbow. "It was interesting. Whatever."

Bellamy doesn't reply, just keeps flipping through it with this sort of...unreadable look on his face. Clarke winces and looks at the wrinkled, well-read pages and finds a whole new thing to be embarrassed about.

"I had some questions, and," Clarke says slowly, and Bellamy looks up sharply, and she continues, "um, on the back," and he flips it over and grins like he does when he manages to beat Octavia at cards and says, "okay, questions I can handle," and pulls a chair up to the kitchen counter.

So Clarke finishes her cookies while Bellamy explains how the Roman Senate works and the significance of naming-and renaming-in the Roman imperial tradition, and why they still call that time period the _Pax Romana _despite it containing one of the most famous wars in popular culture, and how Augustus usually gets the short end of that stick anyway since Shakespeare decided to turn him into a villain and Octavia into a victim, respectively.

"She gets underestimated like that a lot, actually," he says, "the Cleopatra/Antony legend being what it is and all, most people either mischaracterize her or overlook her completely, which is ridiculous considering the influence and power she wielded in Roman society and politics, and not just through her relationship with her brother, for that matter-I mean, her role in the Battle of Actium _alone_-"

"Yeah, I mean, that's only your thesis statement and everything," Clarke teases, "but no, seriously, it's like-was this typical, back then? Because the way movies and books tell it it's like, if you were a woman you were either barefoot and pregnant or enslaved, and-"

"Oh _man_," Bellamy says, "you've got so far to go, grasshopper," and gets up to go pull some books down from his shelves for her.

She almost burns her cookies because she's too engrossed in his explanation of Octavia and Augustus' propaganda campaign against Antony and Cleopatra, and the complex effects it had on Octavia's contemporary reputation, and it's only when she runs into the kitchenette to take them out to cool that she realizes how shaky her legs are, how her stomach won't sit still and the flush on her cheeks isn't from the oven.

_God,_ she thinks forlornly, and takes the opportunity to duck into the bathroom to splash water on her face, and when she comes out Bellamy shrugs a little sheepishly and says, "sorry, I got carried away, I guess," and something sort of-_breaks, _in Clarke's head, and before she can second-guess it she's marching over and kissing that rueful look right off his face.

Bellamy grabs her hips and doesn't even hesitate to kiss her back, and then it gets just,_ frantic,_ and they're grappling at each other's clothes and Clarke feels like she might die if she doesn't get her hands on his skin _right now, _and when she pulls away for air he's already got her jeans undone, because of course it's the same for him, of course she wasn't alone in this, she doesn't know why she thought that, even for a second.

"Okay, so, did she really adopt Cleopatra's kids?" Clarke asks, as a joke really, but Bellamy laughs as he's pushing her down onto back on the couch and says, "yeah, part of the propaganda thing, plus it neutralized Antony's heirs and helped solidify Julio-Claudian rule," and Clarke moans and grasps desperately at his shoulders, and thinks, _oh._

They fuck twice in the living room and then Bellamy picks her up and carries her to bed, where they fall into a dead-sleep nap for four hours. Clarke wakes up from a dream about Augustus, the first Emperor, and wakes Bellamy up so he can fuck her again, and she muffles her cries in the pillow and thinks about the Battles of Philippi, about division of territory and how even the smallest, most inconsequential decision can define an empire, later on down the line.

"So, I guess we're doing this," Bellamy says later, as they're feeding each other Jasper's cookies, "I mean, it's not like-you're not my student, you've never been my student, and-"

"We'll figure it out," Clarke assures him, not wanting to think about it now, not when there's so many questions to ask, so much history left to cover. She takes a deep breath and wraps an arm around his waist and says, "Can you tell me more about the Constitution? Like was it actually written down, with protections, like ours, or was it just pretty much up to the emperor as far as what rules they followed?"

Bellamy smiles, like a promise, and lifts her up onto the kitchen counter so they're face to face, and says, "more the latter than the former, it's kind of complicated," and Clarke wiggles a little closer, ready for this, ready to listen.


	3. Chapter 3

Clarke goes to one of his lectures and sweats through her clothes, like she chose a seat in the back but she's still pretty sure that a few people saw her squirming and now she's gonna be the weird girl with the bladder infection on campus, but whatever. She hangs back after and they fuck on the floor behind the podium while he murmurs about Cicero's five canons of rhetoric in her ear.

He grades papers in bed sometimes and she always starts out with this vague promise to herself that she'll keep to her side and let him finish, but he's one of those teachers that complains and talks back to the essays like every error personally offends him, so she always ends up wiggling under his arms and into his lap so she can rub off against his leg while he rambles about the Tribunate and the Licinio-Sextian Laws and Lex Hortensia. It's better than any dirty talk that ever could exist, after all, Finn's "baby"s and Wells' "yeah like that"s are nothing compared to Bellamy muttering in Latin against her neck as he bends her down over the couch, or the cadence of his voice when he's arguing with Carlos Armijo from the Classics department about his syllabus for his freshman level Roman Oratory class, stomping around the living room and complaining bitterly about how_ these kids are never going to learn how to read primary texts if nobody assigns them primary texts, damn it._

He goes on a trip to a conference in Seattle for a week and a half, and two days in Clarke breaks down and borrows Octavia's key so she can steal one of his books and spends most of the night curled up in bed reading Dionysius of Halicarnassus out loud to herself until she's trembling and panting, and goes off the second she slides her hand down into her panties because she's thinking about the time he took her to dinner at that really fancy place two towns over and then spent the entire meal talking about Atticistic literature.

It's ridiculous, the weirdest kink ever, she has no fucking clue how she's gonna get through the Marcus Aurelius lecture that's coming up in her Philosophy class. Bellamy thinks it's hilarious, and has no suggestions whatsoever, especially considering that he has a similar problem whenever she starts talking about science. On his sixth day in Seattle, they end up having the nerdiest phone sex ever because Clarke made the mistake of asking him to quiz her for her cellular biology test.

"Explain autophagy to me," he demands, and Clarke replies, "okay, but then you have to talk about the Third Punic War some more."

("God," Octavia tells her in disgust, "you two freaks really deserve each other." Clarke really hopes so; she's not sure she even could go back to normal sex after this.)


	4. Chapter 4

They manage to keep it quiet for a total of, like, three weeks, which is impressive to say the least, considering that the night they met they rounded third base at the local townie bar while half the football team did jaeger shots six feet away.

Octavia helps a little, but not much since she's pretty disgusted by the whole thing, and so it's mostly up to Clarke to explain why nobody ever sees her outside of class anymore, why she wore those jeans three days in a row, why Rachael Newman saw her walking home yesterday at 4 AM when she was out for an early morning jog.

"I mean," Raven says, "it's not like you're all that subtle, it's pretty obvious. New boyfriend, right?"

Clarke shrugs. That's not the part of the thing she wants to keep secret. "Yeah."

Monty and Jas both look instantly bored and turn back to their 3DS game, but Finn frowns. "Who is it?"

"None of your beeswax," Clarke says, and watches in satisfaction as Raven reaches over and slaps Finn's forehead. "Come on, Finn, seriously."

"I was just asking," Finn grumbles, and turns back to his macaroni and cheese. Raven makes eye contact with her over his shoulder and rolls her eyes pointedly.

"So, it's a secret, right?" she asks later, jogging to catch up with Clarke outside the caf. She wiggles her eyebrows. "Hot."

"Yeah, we're trying to keep the magic alive," Clarke jokes, and only feels a little bit bad about lying. But whatever, it's not a real lie. Octavia's the only person who really needs to know, anyway.

Things have been a little strained between them lately though, and Clarke's chalked it up to the ultimate awkward of how she and Bellamy met, but this assumption is disproved fairly effectively when Octavia marches over and rips Clarke's ear buds out and says, "okay, we need to talk," and Clarke's face must be a sight, because then she sighs and goes, "don't worry, I'm not mad at you or anything, you know I have trouble with tone," and tugs Clarke up out of her desk chair.

Octavia drives them to Starbucks in her shitty, rusty Lumina, and they sit parked in the lot with iced lattes while Octavia chain smokes her way through a pack of Camels and tells Clarke about her mother's death, staring fixedly at the windshield, not once making eye contact. Clarke clutches her latte and tries not to breathe audibly until she's finished.

"They never caught the guy," Octavia says, "can you believe that? Just runs somebody over, drives off, no consequences. Christ." She's full of nervous movement, flicking her ash out the window, fiddling with the A/C knobs, picking at her nail polish. It freaks Clarke out because she's usually so serene—energetic, yes, but in a smooth sort of way, like a fast-moving river, in contrast against Bellamy's deep, thoughtful lake. "And I mean, I'm not telling you all this so you'll feel sorry for us, just—so you'll understand, you know, because you're my friend and he's my brother and I don't want to lose either one of you. Like, it's sort of in all our best interests that this work out, is what I'm saying."

Clarke clears her throat, because it's only been three weeks and that sounded like it was headed to a real serious place, "I wouldn't—even if it didn't work out for whatever reason, you know we'd keep it away from you, O."

Octavia just shrugs and takes another drag. "That's sweet, but not exactly what I meant," she says, and looks over at her pointedly, until Clarke gets it.

"Oh," she says, feeling profoundly dumb, "oh."

"He used his inheritance to hire a lawyer to keep me out of foster care," Octavia says evenly, "he worked three jobs through undergrad to cover our bills. The whole world thought we were fucked, but he made something of himself anyway, and now he's a professor and he's dating the dean's daughter and I swear to_ God _Clarke, if this fucks up his career, I will _end _you." Clarke swallows thickly. "I mean, I love you and all. But still."

Clarke takes a deep breath and looks her friend in the eye and says, "I'm not going to let that happen," and Octavia stares at her for a very long, frightening minute before nodding, seemingly satisfied.

"And seriously, don't ever tell me about your sex life." She shudders, tossing her still-lit cigarette out the window. "I know way too much already."

"Deal," Clarke replies.

* * *

There are three sexts from Bellamy waiting for her on her phone when she gets back to campus and then a fourth one that says, _shit wrong number sorry :/_, and she laughs out loud and sends back,_ you asshole, _to which he responds, _this is rebecca, right? _and Clarke replies, _just for that ur buying dinner tonight, _as if he doesn't buy every night already. So she's distracted by that, and by the fancy underwear she wore today on a whim (well—"fancy" is kind of subjective, it's basically a push up bra and boyshorts with DNA strands on them; either way she thinks Bellamy will appreciate it) and by thinking about the look on Octavia's face as she'd talked about Aurora, which is why she's not really paying attention as she walks over to Bellamy's place, and anyway, that's how they get caught.

She doesn't put the pieces together right away; at first she assumes people are looking at her funny because of the love bite on her neck, and so most of the morning is spent in a self-conscious tizzy, constantly fussing with her scarf and cursing Bellamy in her head. Then Raven hurries up to her in the library as she's coming out of her lit class and grabs her arm and says, "okay come with me," and practically drags her away, to an empty study room on the first floor.

"What, oh my God," Clarke exclaims, and Raven goes, "are you _sleeping _with the _new history professor_?!" and Clarke gasps. "Oh my God, you _are_! Clarke—"

"How—oh fuck, how do you know that," Clarke says frantically, and Raven's face morphs from scandalized excitement to something more sympathetic.

"Finn saw you," Raven explains, "or that's what he said anyway, I didn't really _believe _him believe him, I thought he was just exaggerating—last night, in town? He saw you kissing him on the sidewalk?"

"Oh God," Clarke says faintly, and grips Raven's arm, feeling sick. Raven tugs them both down onto a bench and instantly pulls her into a sideways hug, and Clarke leans her head against Raven's shoulder and tries not to panic. "It's pretty new, he's my roommate's older brother, and—"

"Oh, honey," Raven says, "you don't have to explain."

"I like him a lot," Clarke says, and then, fiercely, "he's a good guy, it's not—he's a _good guy_," and pulls out of Raven's embrace. "Oh my God, I gotta go. I gotta—"

"Go, hurry, you can catch her before lunch," Raven says, and waves her off. Clarke's gone before she's even finished talking.

Her mother's office is in the oldest and most intimidating building on campus, and Clarke's appearances are rare enough that the receptionist doesn't even recognize her. It takes him like five minutes to track Abby down and he stares suspiciously at her the whole time, as if she's trying to infiltrate the place or something, and by the time Abby finally pops her head out of the back, Clarke's about ready to explode.

"Clarke," she says, with a pleased smile, "honey, this is a surprise, did you—"

"Do you have a minute?" Clarke interrupts, and watches as Abby's face falls back into its normal, serious mask.

"For you, of course," she says, and ushers Clarke inside.

She clearly doesn't know yet, and for a second Clarke seriously considers chickening out, but—no. It's just a rumor now, but if she lets it go it'll be more than that, and—no. Time to be a big girl, Clarke thinks, and as soon as Abby's closed the door, she says, "I need to tell you something and I need you not to freak out."

"Well, that's not a very reassuring sentence," Abby says, waving Clarke towards one of the chairs. Clarke shakes her head, and she sighs, moving to lean against her desk. "I'll do my best. What's up?"

"Bellamy Blake and I have been seeing each other for the past three weeks," Clarke says, blurting it all out at once. Abby sucks in a sharp, surprised breath, her face turning into the very picture of alarm. "Don't! No freaking out. Just wait and listen first."

"_Clarke_," Abby says severely, and Clarke barrels through, before she can get the chance.

"No. Here's the deal. This isn't going to be an issue. We're not doing anything wrong, or illegal, or breaking any rules. I'm of age, I'm a senior, I graduate in six months, and he's never been my teacher. We'll sign whatever paperwork you need us to, and we'll be discreet as possible, but Mom, this is not going to become a problem for him. Do you understand me?"

"Are you—seriously?" Abby asks incredulously, dangerously. "You've just told me that you're dating a _professor_, you do not have the ground to stand on here, Clarke!"

"I think I do," Clarke says evenly, "because if you go after him then I am never going to speak to you again," and Abby goes pale. "I'm dead serious about that, Mom. You know I am."

"Clarke," Abby says, voice breaking, but Clarke just cuts her off again.

"No," she says, "no, Mom. I'm serious about this, and just—_no_."

She waits, her arms crossed, letting Abby see every ounce of fire that's licking up her spine, oddly calm despite everything that's hanging on this one, vital conversation. She may not be in love with Bellamy, but the potential is there, she knows, and anyway none of that even matters because damn it, he's a good man, and Octavia is her friend, and Clarke will tear the remnants of her family apart before she ever lets herself become the thing that ruins them.

"Fine," Abby says, defeated, just as her phone starts ringing. Clarke lets out a long, slow breath, almost lightheaded from a sudden onslaught of relief. "Shit. Clarke—we're not done talking about this—Clarke!"

"Yeah, dinner this weekend, I got it," Clarke says, and hightails it the fuck out of there before anyone can see how hard her hands are shaking.

* * *

Octavia's been blowing up her phone for the past hour, but Clarke sends her a text that says, _took care of it_ and focuses on calling Bellamy, who obviously doesn't pick up, because why would he, when she so urgently needs to talk to him? He's so contrary, even when he's not even trying to be, it's absurd.

She finally gets ahold of him after a half hour or so of calling, and as soon as he picks up she knows he's heard because he sounds so flat. "Clarke, I'm in the middle of something, can you—"

"I talked to my mom, you're in the clear with her," Clarke says, and hears him exhaling loudly, "we need to fill out that form, or whatever, the relationship form. Can you get a meeting with Armijo?"

"I'm in his office right now," Bellamy says slowly, and Clarke blinks, readjusts, and changes direction in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Okay, I'm on my way," Clarke says.

They fill out paperwork in weird silence with Armijo, who looks like he'd rather be doing literally anything else in the world, but thankfully the form is just a basic "I am not being coerced" type thing so it's relatively painless. He also gives them an awkward "good luck" as they leave, so there's that, and Clarke watches Bellamy's shoulders relax a little bit more with every foot they put between them and his office.

"So," Clarke begins, once they're clear, well into the staff parking lot and away from the eyes of campus. "Yeah, um, Finn—"

"Put it on facebook," Bellamy says, grimacing. "I know."

Clarke sighs in frustration. "It was dumb. Careless. I should have—"

"Takes two to kiss, Princess," Bellamy says, and squeezes her shoulder. Clarke leans into it, grateful. "You—your mom wasn't—"

"Happy? No. But she's not—she won't make trouble for you," Clarke says, then takes a deep breath and continues, "if it's—I'd understand if you didn't want to risk it, it's not like I'm—"

He cuts her off with a kiss, squeezing her cheeks between his palms and crowding her up against the side of a blue pickup. Clarke's breathless when he pulls away, squinting up at him, trying to see his face through the glare of the late afternoon sun, shining in her eyes and turning him into shadow.

"I would've gone to bat for you," Bellamy says, in that low voice he uses sometimes when they're talking late at night on the phone, or when they're in bed and he's telling her how beautiful she is. "If it'd gone the other way."

_Me too,_ Clarke thinks fiercely, _a million times over, me too, _and says, "good thing it went the right way then," and kisses him again, not caring who might be watching, not caring at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Clarke's already had a horrible day—midterms came out and she's flirting with a D in Brit Lit, Finn's still passive-aggressive commenting on her facebook photos, she ruined her favorite blouse in the dryer—but she can't back out of lunch with her mom, even when she knows going into it that it'll be a disaster. Six months ago they'd worked out this hokey compromise contract thing, and there's a clause about these weekly summit meeting/endurance meals and if she breaks it now then Abby will hold it over her head for months.

It gets off to a bad start right away, since Abby always insists on Clarke coming up to the faculty lounge to eat, and of course Bellamy is there, eating with some people from the English department—including her Brit Lit professor, Clarke notices uncomfortably—and even though he doesn't even see them at first, and just nods at Clarke as he leaves when he does, it still makes Abby tense up and grip her turkey on rye so hard that mayo oozes out the side.

"Mom," Clarke says, utterly exhausted with this argument already and it hasn't even started yet. Abby squints a little, and sighs, and maybe she's tired of it, too. Clarke hadn't considered that possibility.

"So how are your classes going," Abby says, forcibly cheerful, and sets her sandwich down carefully, as if she hasn't just squeezed its guts out all over her plate. Clarke takes a deep breath and decides to make the best of it.

It doesn't come up again until the very end, when they're on the sidewalk outside the faculty building, about to go their separate ways and Abby touches Clarke's arm and goes, "honey, I'm just concerned for you, that's all, I don't mean to pass judgment," and Clarke digs her fingernails into the meat of her palm and reminds herself that her mother is not actually trying to ruin her life.

"We're being careful," Clarke says evenly, "it's not against the rules, he has no authority over me whatsoever; we're not even in the same department! He's only six years older, Mom, for pete's sake—"

"I know that, Clarke, but your reputation," Abby says, and Clarke has to physically bite her lip to keep from turning this into an argument. "Okay, fine—we don't have to talk about this, it's fine. You're an adult."

"Thank you," Clarke says tightly, and pretends she doesn't see Abby reaching out for a hug as she turns away.

She stews about it all through her afternoon chem lab, and stops by the dorm only to change her clothes and grab her overnight bag. She could go to his apartment and wait for him, but he's got late office hours on Thursdays, and she's not in the mood to bum around in his place for three hours until he gets there. So she sneaks into the Classics building through the basement door and thanks the gods of chance that there are no students waiting outside his office.

He's on the phone when she walks in, and he gives her another one of those dude-nods as she tosses her bag down behind his chair. "I'm sorry to hear that Lisa, but I can't make an exception for—no, I hear you. Listen—" Clarke frowns. "Okay look, you've had two months to write this paper, so you should have a fairly complete draft finished at this point. Email that to me and I'll give you partial credit, alright, that's the best I can do. That's my offer."

Clarke narrows her eyes at him all the way through the rest of the call, and when he hangs up, she says, "little harsh, don't you think?"

Bellamy raises his eyebrows at her. "Excuse me?"

Clarke shrugs, irrationally annoyed. "You were just a little hard on her, that's all."

"Are you kidding me?" Bellamy huffs, irritated. "I'm not doing this with you."

"She was just asking for an extension, Bellamy, for your midterm assignment in your survey class, right? It's not that big of a deal—"

"That student has asked for an extension on _every _assignment I've given her so far," Bellamy replies, "not that it matters since it's none of your business—but what I actually meant was I'm not doing this thing where we fight because you're upset about whatever happened with your mom earlier today."

"That's not what I'm doing," Clarke snaps.

"Oh, really."

Clarke feels tears threatening, humiliatingly, and presses her palm to her forehead to try and ward them off. "I'm not—it's not—"

"Aw, jeez," Bellamy says, and stands up to kick his door shut. "Don't do that, Princess—"

Clarke gulps back a sob and falls forward into his arms, shaking the nervous energy out against his chest. She's just so angry, is the problem, and it's not even about Abby's disapproval of Bellamy, really, it's just Abby in general, and how Clarke just doesn't understand how she can walk around normally, expecting things to go back to normal now that Clarke knows what she did to Jake. Not just turning him in, but getting him fired, acting all sad and sympathetic at home while spearheading the campaign to blacklist him at work, and it's been years now but her father still died alone, in an apartment on the other side of the country, with his career in disgrace, and Clarke doesn't know how to forgive somebody for that, let alone the one person she was supposed to be able to trust, no matter what.

Bellamy makes comforting sounds against the top of her head as she fights off the tears, squeezing her shoulders and generally being unflappable in the face of Clarke's weird family issues, as if she hasn't just stomped into the middle of his work day and criticized his teaching methods and then had a bizarre crying fit like the huge freak that she is. If she didn't already know how far gone she was for this guy, it'd be a losing battle now, for sure.

"It's been a rough day," Clarke says pathetically, smearing tears against his neck, and Bellamy makes a low sound, deep in his chest, and squeezes her tighter.

"Yeah, obviously," he says, and pulls her back toward the desk. "Come on."

Clarke sniffs a little and wipes her face and lets him scootch her up on his desk top, watching him slide his laptop and the stack of books out of the way curiously. "Bellamy, what—"

"Where'd we leave off last time?" Bellamy asks, casually stepping between her legs, "Caligula? Agrippina's feud with Tiberius, right?" and Clarke goes hot all over.

"Tiberius died and Caligula became emperor," Clarke says shakily, and lets him push her down on her back. There's a pencil beneath her right shoulder blade and she digs it out and throws at him, smiling when he dodges it easily and squeezes her thighs beneath her skirt.

"Okay so, he was a fucking tyrant basically, you wanna hear about the recession he caused, or his feud with the Senate?" Bellamy asks, and squeezes her crotch through her underwear, reaching down and pulling at the collar of her shirt with his teeth, and Clarke moans and kicks the side of the desk and says, "senate, oh God, the _senate_," and prays that the door is locked because she's not about to move for anything.

Bellamy makes her come just by fingering her and explaining the history of resentment between Caligula and the Roman senators, and then talks some more about the controversial incorporation of religion into his rhetoric that coincided with his expansion of authority as emperor while she takes the rest of their clothes off, sitting up on the desk and trying to get his shirt off without ripping any buttons.

"Okay so he died, right, he got assassinated? Like this," Clarke says breathlessly, and slides to the ground so she can turn and bend down and grip the desk, pulling him against her back with one hand. "Tell me—oh God—"

"By a group led by a member of the Praetorian Guard," Bellamy says, roughly against her ear, and pushes her pelvis against the desk with his hips, "Cassius Chaerea." Clarke thumps her forehead against the wood and groans.

He fucks her like that, still muttering about political conspiracies and ancient criminal trials against the back of her neck, and Clarke's going to have bruises on her thighs from where they're pressing against the edge of his desk but she doesn't care, not when it feels so good it almost hurts, a little. Her last orgasm is more of a halfhearted one, a sort of weak swell of pleasure compared to the dramatic wave of her first, but that's how he always does it—draws it out to the end until she's coasting on a steady pulse of sensation, until she's limp, until she's twitching beneath his hands and whimpering every time he moves. Endurance orgasms, she calls it. Nerdy, history lecture endurance orgasms.

"Okay," he says finally, as he helps her guide her shaking legs back into her skirt, "do you feel better?"

"Yes," Clarke says, and laughs, "oh my God, though, I can't believe we just did that. During your office hours!"

"This is probably why your mother disapproves of me," Bellamy says, with exaggerated sadness, and starts buttoning up her shirt for her. Clarke leans weakly against the desk and grins hard up at the ceiling.

She checks the hallway for any waiting students for him while he puts his own clothes back on, and then sits on the floor behind his chair and does her math homework while he finishes his lesson plans for his Early Middle Ages II class next semester. Then he promises to buy her dinner if she proofreads his paper for the Journal of Interdisciplinary History on religious mobility and interfaith marriage in the Roman Empire, and she tells him, "only if you explain it to me later," and he smirks and replies, "well yeah," like it's obvious.

Well, of course it is, Clarke thinks, and settles in. She doesn't know why she felt the need to ask, honestly.


	6. Chapter 6

There's party after party after party in the weeks leading up to graduation, and Abby takes Clarke to a surprisingly pleasant dinner at La Croix, but what she's honestly looking forward to the most is Bellamy and Octavia's private_ yeah, Clarke's fucking awesome, look at how many med schools she got into_ celebration, which consists of a homemade jello shot cake and a House M.D. marathon at Bellamy's apartment.

"Yeah, cuz we're better than all your other friends," Octavia says through a scoff, "obviously."

Clarke glances over at Bellamy. "Well," she says, and Octavia blows a loud raspberry in her face, rolling her eyes to heaven.

"I regret so many things about the two of you," she says, and shoves a neon green shot in her mouth.

Three episodes in, they get bored and start a drinking game, but since Octavia used all the booze for the cake, they end up just eating a shot each time, which gets them all way too wasted way too quickly. Clarke can't really bring herself to complain though, especially since Bellamy and Octavia lose all the pretense when they're drunk and turn into sappy idiots, complimenting each other and smiling all wide and warm. It's like a little peek into an alternate universe where neither of them are assholes, Clarke thinks fondly.

Bellamy herds Octavia onto the pull-out once she starts talking to the lamp like it's a person, and she goes out like a light the second her head hits the pillow. Then he and Clarke stumble drunkenly around the bedroom in the dark, trying to undress quietly and failing rather spectacularly at it, especially since they keep laughing at each other. Finally Clarke just gives up and flops down face first on the bed, still in her jeans, and lets Bellamy tug them off for her, muffling giggles into his sheets.

They sleep in late the next day, a Sunday, classes are long over and Bellamy doesn't have any meetings on campus, and Clarke only rolls out of bed twice to pee and pull the blinds shut against the daylight, diving back into the blankets before Bellamy can get any funny ideas about waking up. Octavia's gone when they finally climb their way back up to reality, but there's a cold pot of coffee on the counter and a note that says,_ love u bitches, call me if u wanna do dinner xoxo_, and then a doodle of a girl puking into a trashcan in the bottom corner of the paper.

"Thank God, she's found a way to use that Art minor already," Bellamy says dryly, and pins it to the fridge.

Clarke warms the coffee up in the microwave and makes Toaster Strudels for breakfast-slash-lunch, and they watch a rerun of_ Wonders of the Universe_ on the couch in their underwear. Bellamy's phone beeps a few times but he ignores it, pulling her into his lap so they can make out during the commercials.

"I'm very proud of you by the way," he says, "for graduating and getting into med school and all that, yeah, but also for pulling off that C-plus in Brit Lit. Miracles can happen."

"I try," Clarke says humbly, and bites his earlobe. "You haven't asked me where I'm going yet."

"Where are you going?" Bellamy asks obediently.

Clarke slides her feet to the floor, leaning hard on his shoulders so he reclines back against the couch. "Down on you," she says slyly, and he laughs in surprise, reaching out and grabbing her hand loosely as she sinks to her knees.

"Oh, that's very funny—_fuck_," he says, and breaks off into a hiss when she gets right to business, pulling his boxers down and getting her mouth on his cock.

There's something very surreal about giving a blowjob with Brian Cox talking about thermodynamics in the background, but Clarke rolls with it, tugging on Bellamy's hand so he knows he can touch her head, leaning her arms on his thighs and scritching her nails against the coarse hair on his forearms. She honestly likes doing this, especially to Bellamy, who hates giving up control in any way and so rarely gives her the chance, always preferring to give rather than receive. It's for that reason she supposes she enjoys it so much—the challenge is half the fun, after all.

Plus, he curses in Tagalog when she really gets him going, which is fucking hot. Like, hotter than the Latin even. Maybe.

She's wet and aching by the time she makes him come, just from listening to his voice get hoarse, and—okay, so a little bit because of thermodynamics, too—and he pulls her up and kisses her stomach and murmurs, "tell me how your heart works," and so she tells him about the chambers and the four valves, tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, aortic, she tells him what they all do and tries to keep her voice steady through it all, while he's licking her out and the television is still on, showing diagrams of the universe and explaining its secrets.

Afterwards they make more Toaster Strudels, and she tells him she's staying in the city and accepting UMass' offer, and he says, "oh good, I was worried you'd go for Georgetown, their program is kind of overrated," and she thinks:_ the human heart beats a hundred thousand times a day,_ and _fuck, fuck, I'm in love with you, fuck._

She'd tell him but she's not as smart as she pretends she is—she'd tell him, but she's a coward. So she just smiles and goes to grab a blanket from the bed so they can tuck in to watch more episodes of _Wonders_—there's an all-day marathon, and neither of them have anywhere to be.


	7. Chapter 7

They're tentatively approaching the "so I'm gonna need a place to live when I start med school, and uh," conversation when Bellamy takes her to a dinner party being thrown by this girl named Roma who apparently, he used to date, although it totally wasn't serious and she's got nothing to worry about at all, Octavia assures her.

"We had a fuck buddy thing in grad school, it didn't last very long," Bellamy says, "we don't have to go if you feel weird about it."

"No, it's fine," Clarke tells him, and even if her stomach twinges a little bit when she sees tall, willowy Roma, kissing Bellamy's cheek and grinning widely, whatever, she's determined to be mature about this.

Roma's nice, though, witty and personable, and her girlfriend Michelle is studying microbiology at UMass so Clarke doesn't feel too alienated at a table populated mostly by Humanities professors, so it's fine, not a big deal at all. They eat a pasta casserole that reminds Clarke of her dad's cooking and Bellamy keeps his hand on her thigh beneath the table while he shoots the shit with Roma and Michelle and Miller, his roommate from Stanford, and it's all totally fine.

"So, okay," Roma says, later in the kitchen, elbowing up next to Clarke where she's helping with the dishes, "I don't wanna make this weird or anything but I feel like there's this giant Bellamy-shaped elephant in the room, and I just—"

"God, no, I know," Clarke says, "don't worry about it, we don't have to—"

"Thank God," Roma says, and they both laugh, relieved. "You seem so nice, I didn't wanna—" she shrugs. "Anyway. You guys seem happy; that's so great."

"We are," Clarke says, realizing with a simple clarity that it's true, feeling secure in it. "Things are going really well."

"Good. He's a good guy." Roma scrunches her mouth to the side, a little goofily, and slides her fingers through the soapy water. "Between you and me? He's a little_ too _good for my taste, if you know what I mean."

"Uh, what," Clarke says.

"You know," Roma replies, "sort of…I don't wanna say 'prudish' but I can't think of a better word. Buttoned up maybe?" She shrugs and smiles. "We were just incompatible. We make better friends."

Twenty hours ago, they'd been drunk on homemade margaritas and Bellamy tried to give her a lap dance to a Lana del Rey song until Clarke was screaming with laughter on the couch. He also walks around naked. Like a lot. His neighbors complain. Clarke tries not to gape.

"Uh, yeah," she says, for lack of anything better.

She has to ask him about it, because that's just weird, and that night she rolls over as he's setting the alarm and goes, "so Roma told me you were sorta shy in bed, what's up with that," and watches in mild shock as he kind of freezes up and does his best deer-in-headlights impression.

"Um," he says.

"I don't mean to," Clarke says, "I mean if you don't wanna talk about it, it's—"

"No, it's not that," Bellamy says. "It's just—" he huffs and runs one hand through his hair, mussing the careful style she'd gelled into it five hours before. "I don't know, most girls I was with tended to be—it was different."

"Different how," Clarke pushes, because she's told him about Finn, who lied to her, and Wells, who wanted more than she could give, and even about her mother, who broke her heart more than both of them combined. There's something here in this that feels like that, those conversations late at night when they first started sleeping together, when they were both rambling their way into intimacy. There's something behind this.

"I fucked around a lot in high school," he tells her, "my mom dying and all, you know. Then in college, I got serious about my grades and—I don't know, shit changed, but the people around me, uh, didn't. They didn't—they kept treating me like I was the same, even when—"

"Oh," Clarke says, and touches his arm, and he shudders, leaning into it.

"It fucks you up after awhile," he says, like he's confessing it, "feeling like two different people. That's all. It's different with you, though."

Clarke can see it, understand it, she gets whiplash herself sometimes, watching him talking to one of his students, explaining something so patiently one minute and then turning around to murmur about how he likes how her ass looks in that skirt the next. Bickering childishly with Octavia over cheeseburgers and then debating budget plans at the school-wide faculty/student meeting twenty minutes later. He's not just one thing, he's a variety, has the ability to inhabit six different roles at once and seem comfortable in all of them, it's something she admires about him and she can see so clearly how Roma and whoever else, however many other women there were, might have seen him from one angle and made the mistake of thinking that that's all there was to see.

We contain multitudes, Clarke thinks, and rolls closer to hitch her leg up around his waist, press her cheek to his shoulder.

"It's different with you, for me too," she tells him, and he squeezes her waist in reply. Yeah maybe that living together talk won't be as hard as she thought.


	8. Chapter 8

In June, Clarke gets into lingerie, completely accidentally. It's Raven's fault really; she and Clarke go to New York City for a girls' weekend to celebrate Raven's new internship at E.C.H. Hill and at her insistence, spend most of the second day's afternoon in Agent Provocateur on the Upper East Side.

Clarke's approach to fashion up to now could be boiled down to "does it fit" and "is it clean," pretty much, so she's sort of uncomfortable at first, put off by the aggressive _prettiness_ of it all, but Raven blithely refuses to just let her sit in the corner on her smartphone, so before she knows it she has her own sales attendant pulling her along, asking her about colors and styles and _when was the last time you had a proper fitting?_ - which is never, of course, like, Clarke didn't even know you could do that for your boobs.

By the time she escapes she has a new bra size - small wonders never cease - and a new pair of sheer briefs that cost as much as her last iPod that she can't _quite_ regret buying. Raven looks so proud Clarke is afraid she's going to spontaneously hug her in the middle of the street, or something.

"You should've bought the matching bra too," Raven says, "that green color is amazing on you."

"I guess I just don't see the point in spending so much money on something that you're just gonna take off right away anyway," Clarke says, "it's not like I don't look hot in my regular underwear, too."

Raven laughs. "That's not the only reason," she says, and when Clarke looks over, confused, she shrugs, "wear those panties tomorrow when we go to the show. You'll see what I mean."

It's practically a dare, so when Clarke's getting dressed the next night, she reaches for the powder pink shopping bag instead of her suitcase, and wears her very first pair of expensive, naughty underwear beneath her dress as she and Raven yawn their way through Phantom of the Opera. It's much more exciting than the musical, by far, and Clarke maybe sees what Raven meant every time she shifts in her seat and feels the silk rubbing against her hip, that little extra thrill she gets when she catches sight of herself in the reflection of a window. It's like having a secret, Clarke thinks, a secret that makes you feel sexy, and confident, and a little bit wild.

When she gets back home she tells Octavia about it, who gets a glint in her eye and shows her a website where Clarke can order an entire box of shit to try on at home and send back what she doesn't like or doesn't fit, and from that point onward it's just a lost cause. She discovers bralettes, an amazing invention she can't _believe_ she never knew about before, and decides corsets aren't worth it at all, no matter how great they make her curves look. She falls in love with the whole bandeau look, and figures out pretty quickly that her breasts are too big to really pull it off, and spends like two weeks being super bummed out about that, before she moves onto long-lines and falls in love with those even harder. She decides most lingerie sets are pretty dumb, with the little, flimsy scraps of material and tiny little hooks that look great on the model but make Clarke want to pull her hair out, standing in front of her mirror and trying to figure out which snap connects where. Shapewear usually makes Clarke feel silly, but she finds a really pretty slip at Victoria's Secret that makes her feel beautiful, with lace at the bottom and a cut-out on the back that Bellamy will slip his hand through when she wears it to bed. Thongs and g-strings are very much _not her thing_ (this she actually already knew, thanks to an ill-advised experiment on Spring Break sophomore year) but there's a whole world of boyshorts out there that are much fancier and prettier than the Hanes three-packs she picks up at Wal-Mart, and there's another type called a "tanga" that's sort of an underwear version of a bikini bottom that Clarke really likes, too.

She's not even doing it for Bellamy, or for sex with Bellamy really, because it's not like they need help spicing things up in that department; they've moved onto mythology now and Clarke's _really_ enjoying the Aeneid stuff, and anyway neither of them are particularly into the show-offy, exhibition side of sex, so underwear doesn't really factor into what they do with each other. Plus, Clarke is fairly sure that he gets more worked up watching her yell at the Steelers on Monday Night Football while wearing sweatpants and dirty socks than he does when she saunters into the bedroom in a fancy lace bra, so whatever.

(Well - watching her yell at anything, really. The yelling is a thing, for him. One time she got really pissed off about something Jasper said about the recent abortion law passed in Connecticut and paced around the living room ranting about it for awhile until he practically tackled her into bed, right in the middle of a sentence, and well - she doesn't think it was the lecture on bodily autonomy that got him hot, is what she's saying.)

Nah, she just likes it, unexpectedly, likes the indulgence and the way it feels like pampering herself, but in a sort of practical way. It doesn't hurt that the fancier the bra is, the more comfortable it tends to be, especially since she's buying the proper size and actually paying attention to things like style when she picks it out. Knowing the difference between demi cup and plunge and balconette and how each of them will feel when they're on makes a world of difference, especially by like, five o'clock when she's been out and about all day and her back hurts and all she wants is to curl up in bed with hot chocolate and a fuzzy blanket - she really didn't realize how much uncomfortable underwear had been factoring into her bad days, but now that she does, she doesn't think she'll ever go back again.

Octavia and Raven both think it's amazing, mostly because Clarke won't beg off to the bookstore while they hit up Victoria's Secret at the mall, and for her birthday in July they go in together on an entire set of solar system print underwear they find on Etsy that Bellamy thinks is fucking hilarious.

"They glow in the dark, too," Clarke tells him, which sets him off laughing again, so she decides to wear them to the UMass' medical school's Black Tie Dinner fundraiser they attend in the first week of August, just as a joke for the end of the night, to apologize for dragging him along as her date.

"I don't mind," Bellamy says, as she fixes his bow tie, grimacing in a way that tells her he really does mind, and he's trying not to be too obvious about it, "it's not like you're not coming with me to Armijo's auction thing next month."

"I don't have to wear uncomfortable clothes to Armijo's charity auction," Clarke tells him, and brushes some lint off the lapel of his jacket. He's really just...uncomfortably attractive in a tux, even if he looks weird with his hair gelled back like that, sort of younger, and sleazier. "I just appreciate it, is all."

Bellamy tugs on a stray piece of her hair before she can stop him, pulling it loose from its clip, and laughs when she scowls and backs away. "We're gonna be late," he reminds her, as she runs back into the bathroom to check the damage.

"Jerk," Clarke mutters, and feels a little less bad about making him come - probably his intention, she realizes, but - still.

Bellamy's car is in the shop getting a new fan belt, so they have to take a taxi, pulling up to the convention center just as the last of the guests are trickling in and the drinks are starting to be served. Clarke gets sidetracked in the lobby by Tina Kwan, another incoming first year med student, and Bellamy makes small talk with her fiance Mike while Tina gabs for ten minutes about the married student housing on campus and how she's not sure if it'd even be worth it, or should they just bite the bullet and buy a condo? Important questions.

"I mean, I guess it just depends on what you want?" Clarke says helplessly, and wilts in relief when Bellamy seizes the opportunity to herd them into the dining room, because the speeches are about to start and they still have to find their seats. "Okay, see, this is why I brought you," she murmurs under her breath and Bellamy gives a long-suffering sigh.

"If you're gonna be a doctor, princess, you're gonna have to get better at this whole talking to over-sharing strangers thing," he says, and Clarke thinks forlornly, _great, another thing to learn._

The entire night is boring as hell; the keynote speaker is the assistant dean of the medical college and her speech is a cookie cutter of the one she gave at graduation two years ago, but at least the food is good, and the bar is open. Bellamy endures all of it in stoic silence, and if she didn't know him so well she'd miss the way he twitches whenever the woman next to him laughs, and the way he keeps reaching up to loosen his tie and then stopping, remembering himself mid motion.

Clarke does a quick rotation around the room, hitting the people she most needed to say hello to and then skips them out early, as soon as the dessert plates have been cleared, making noises about an early morning the next day. Bellamy takes the tie off as soon as they hit the sidewalk and Clarke tugs it out of his hand and sticks it in her purse before he can get any ideas about throwing it into the gutter, or something.

"You can mess up my hair now if you want," Clarke offers, as they wait by the curb for their taxi, and laughs when he immediately does so, running his fingers through the chignon and turning the entire thing into a mess before she's barely even finished speaking.

"Yeah, that's better," he says, and Clarke's still laughing, trying to reach up and fighting with his hands to get the bobby pins out when he's still doing his best to tangle it, "you look much more like yourself now, the other thing was weird," and Clarke scoffs and gives up and reaches up to mess his hair up too, because _he's _one to talk, and so by the time the cab pulls up they look like the after panel in those Trojan ads, where the couple's sitting on their bed in mussed formal wear, looking like they've just been through a wind tunnel.

She trips over her skirt as she climbs in, still giggly and probably a little tipsy from the champagne from dinner, and he laughs and rubs her knee as he gives his address to the driver, and Clarke sighs and leans her head against the window, feeling content with the world and the little place she's carved into it for herself. When she opens her eyes again Bellamy's looking at her a little strangely though, and she frowns and says, "what," before she realizes that her skirt's hitched up around her thighs and her solar system underwear are glowing in the dim light, visible through the gauzy inner slip of the dress. "Oh," Clarke says, and laughs, tugging the hem down, "yeah, I forgot I was wearing those," and Bellamy blinks like somebody's just slapped him with something. "Bellamy?"

"What, yeah - what?" Bellamy says, kind of dazed, and Clarke gapes at him until he goes, "shut up," in a kind of disgruntled voice, and Clarke bites her lip against a laugh. "Clarke, come on."

"This - seriously? You really like - "

"Ugh, shut _up,_" Bellamy says, and Clarke leans in and whispers, "my bra matches," and laughs in delight when he scowls and jerks away, glancing up at the driver to see if he'd overheard.

She's jumpy with gleeful excitement by the time they finally get home, and makes herself wait until they're in the elevator to reach up and kiss him, leaning her weight against his chest and making him stumble back into the felt-covered wall. He responds heatedly, apparently over being grumpy about the teasing, pulling her closer and pressing his thumbs into that little spot she likes, the dip where her waist curves.

"So glow in the dark, huh," she mumbles, and kisses the cleft in his chin, "I mean, I've got plenty of underwear with galaxy print on it, so I know it's not _that_ - "

"You know what, you really don't want to get into the subject of weird turn ons with me," Bellamy says pointedly, and well, he's got a point there, so.

They leave the lights off of course, so they're stumbling around trying to get their clothes off in only the light from Clarke's laptop, still downloading updates on the desk. She's distracted by her buttons, reminding him to be careful because "that tux is a _rental,_ Bellamy," and so his sudden, sharp inhale as she finally manages to get out of the dress takes her off guard.

She backs up until she feels the edge of the bed against her thighs and looks down at herself, the underwear glowing faintly, little neon green pinpricks of stars and planets against her skin. "You really like this?" she asks wonderingly, shivering at his body heat as he steps close and touches the spot on the bra where the cups hook together, between her breasts. _Yes,_ he doesn't have to say, and Clarke reaches up to kiss him again, because God that is just _so bizarre,_ that out of the hundreds of dollars' worth of high-end lingerie she's bought for herself over the past three months, it's the thirty dollar gag gift that takes his breath away, that's just so..._like him_.

"It looks like you're not wearing anything," he says, crowding her down on the bed and sliding her up towards the headboard with his hands on her waist, "like you're just wearing...the light itself."

Clarke thinks that might be the silliest and most romantic thing anyone's ever said to her in bed, and kisses him again, using her teeth a little just so she can hear that little grunt sound he makes every time she bites his bottom lip. Silly and romantic and bizarre is sort of their niche, after all, so why not. Greek mythology, glow in the dark underwear, yelling at football games on Monday evenings in dirty socks - it's just part of what makes them who they are, what makes them work. What will make them last, hopefully.

She keeps the underwear on for as long as possible, pushing him over onto his back and climbing on top so he can see better, reach up and touch her breasts through the bra while she rubs their hips together and pants, trying not to get too worked up too fast, to make it last like when he does it. She's not as good at it though, especially when she leans over to kiss her way down his chest, tracing the contours of his ab muscles with her tongue, the way he twitches whenever she hits a sensitive spot or when she gets far enough down his abdomen that her breasts brush over his cock and his hips jerk up, like he can't even control it.

"Oh, I have an idea," Clarke says breathlessly, inspiration striking suddenly, "shit, I can't believe we've never - sit up," and Bellamy grunts, shaking his head and trying to pull her back up his body, towards his face, "no seriously, trust me."

"What the hell," Bellamy grumps as she pulls him up, pushing his feet down to the floor, "what are you - "

"I said trust me," Clarke says crankily, and sinks down to her knees between his legs, pulling his hips close and pressing the top of her breasts against his cock. Bellamy chokes and slaps his palms against the bed so loud that Clarke laughs. "Oh, _now_ you're with me - "

"Jesus fuck," Bellamy says, and Clarke leans over and kisses his navel, already feeling him leaking a little against her skin, "keep the bra on, princess," and Clarke nods frantically, sitting up straighter and pushing her breasts together with her hands so he can slide his cock between them, slow at first, then faster as they find their rhythm. Clarke looks up at his face and her stomach drops at the wild look he wears, the way he's fisting the sheets in his hands, his hair falling messily against his forehead.

"Hey, Bellamy," Clarke says breathlessly, as his pace starts to get erratic and her chest gets damp with sweat and precome, "the largest known star is VY Canis Majoris, first observed by a French astronomer in 1801," and he groans and grabs her shoulder and comes.

He mutters something in Tagalog as she stands up, rubbing his come into her skin and grinning triumphantly, then grabs her hand and says, in English, "okay, I officially forgive you for the bow tie," and so she's laughing as he pulls her underwear down and presses his fingers into her, pulling one of her feet up onto the bed and spreading her legs wide so he can press his mouth to her clit.

It's a precarious sort of position and they almost topple over twice, and Bellamy finally pulls away in defeat when her leg gets a cramp and she starts laughing again at the look on his face, grumbling about how _her_ idea worked perfectly, of course, isn't that just _typical_, and so by the time he gets her down on her back, he starts going for it in a sort of grumpy, straightforward way, sliding two fingers inside her and rubbing up mercilessly against her g-spot, biting at her nipples through her bra and making her gasp. Her orgasm takes her by surprise almost with how quickly it creeps up, and he keeps fucking her with his hand all the way through, not letting up until she whines at him protest, squirming against his palm from overstimulation.

"That's what I thought," he says at the end, like making her come was winning an argument or something, and Clarke laughs again, and says, "you're ridiculous," and he shrugs and doesn't disagree.

As soon as she can feel her legs again, Clarke gets up and gets them some water, pulling her bra off with a grimace, already dreading what it'll look like in the morning light, and Bellamy snorts at her as she balls it up in a stray towel from the laundry hamper, because he's such a _man_ and never understands the difference between getting dirty in bed and dealing with come stains on your favorite pair of Silver jeans. "Hush," Clarke tells him, and makes him drink his half of the water, and manhandles him down under the covers, curling up against his chest. "I hope they're not ruined," Clarke says, through a yawn, and feels him exhaling against the top of her head, ruffling her hair.

"I'll buy you more, if they are," he says, and Clarke huffs in sleepy amusement and thinks, _yeah, I bet you will._


	9. Chapter 9

By the time September rolls around, they've been more or less living together all summer, which Clarke realizes one day when she stops by her mom's house to pack up the rest of the stuff she'll need for the school year and realizes how bare her bedroom is. She ends taking just a bunch of winter coats and her favorite pair of knee-high boots, and when she gets back to the apartment, she walks from one end of it to the other and actually sees all the signs of cohabitation that she just sort of...didn't notice, before. Her grocery list on the fridge, her shoes by the door, mixed in with his, their shared drawer of socks, her art pencils and watercolors stacked haphazardly on the windowsill, next to the chair they bought at Goodwill together.

It's the bookshelf that really cinches it though, because there's two entire shelves he's sacrificed for her medical textbooks and the literature anthologies she'd saved from her undergrad classes. Now _that's_ commitment, Clarke thinks.

"Do you ever think about us getting a bigger place?" she asks him that night, as a test, maybe, just to see how he reacts.

He barely even looks up from his laptop. "I mean," he says, "if you keep buying underwear and shoes all the time then we'll need a bigger dresser, at the very least."

"I don't have that many shoes," Clarke says petulantly, because no, she can't really argue the underwear thing, "besides, you only wear like, three outfits. I could sell ninety percent of your clothes on eBay and I swear you wouldn't even notice."

Bellamy looks skeptical, probably because the idea of selling his bargain bin wardrobe on eBay _is_ sort of ridiculous, Clarke will admit. "Do you want a bigger place?" he asks, "my lease will be up in November, we could start looking."

Clarke rolls it around in her head and then says, "you know what, yeah," because now that she thinks about it, it's a pretty good idea. The apartment is decent, and has good memories inside of it, but the oven is crappy and cooks everything unevenly, the carpet is ugly and the neighbors downstairs are coke dealers, they're pretty sure. Clarke thinks about a place designed for two instead of one, with a shower big enough to fit both of them, closet space to spare, a kitchen she can bake things in. Maybe a balcony, or windows that aren't nailed shut, at least. Yeah, it's a good idea.

"Okay," Bellamy says, and shrugs, and goes back to his work, and well, that's how that happens.

Clarke has all these grand, quaint ideas about house hunting that get dashed pretty quickly by the first month of med school, which of course is the ultimate lesson in humility, and it's well into the first week of October before she even gets a good grip on things enough to consider something like a move. Bellamy's fairly busy himself, and so for a while they only ever see each other at night, when she stumbles in zombie-style at nine o'clock, barely managing to stay awake to eat whatever food he's set aside for her before collapsing into bed. They get well-acquainted with quickies in the bathroom as they get ready in the morning, pretty much - it's not the same, but they deal with it. They'd known it'd be like this, after all.

Monty's actually the one who gets the ball rolling, of all people, when he up and quits his lucrative job at Wells Fargo and decides to move back home and start applying for graduate school for the spring semester, surprising the hell out of everyone but Jasper, who'd been lamenting for months about what a bummer Monty had been lately.

"I thought I could just jump straight in," he tells her, over one of their determined 'let's not lose touch' coffee dates. "But I just don't feel _ready,_ and what's the use of working some job I don't like when I could keep going and get a degree in something I _love?_ Yeah, it pays well, but if I have a shot at doing something I'm passionate about, then it feels stupid not to jump at it."

"I mean, if your parents are gonna help pay for it, why not, right," Clarke says, "not everybody's that lucky."

"I know, they're great, I feel like I shouldn't waste the opportunity since I have it, you know," Monty says emphatically, "I hate to leave you guys, but - "

"Hey, we got you for an extra five months longer than we thought," Clarke says, and Monty smiles and reaches out to squeeze her hand, "besides, you know you can't get rid of us that easily."

"It's gonna suck breaking my lease though," Monty says with a grimace, "I just signed a new one like a month ago," and Clarke thinks, _oh yeah! Oh crap._

"Er," Clarke says, "yeah, about that," and tries to remember how big Monty's shower is.

Bellamy is fairly apathetic about the idea when she talks to him about it, but that might have to do with a conference in December that he was roped into, he's supposed to present a paper that he hated writing and so he's been edgy and stressed about it for weeks. "I mean, if you think it'll work, I trust you," he says carelessly, "and it'll help Monty out, so whatever, it's fine."

Clarke's trying hard not to be irritated with his lack of interest in the whole thing, constantly reminding herself that she doesn't exactly have room to talk, considering she'd forgotten about it completely for like, six weeks, but the closer they get to the move, the more dismissive he seems whenever she brings it up, and it's not exactly reassuring. Intellectually she knows it's an adjustment going from a summer-long honeymoon period to real life, with classes and grades and work and stress, that he's under a lot of pressure being the newest professor in the department, not to mention whatever gossip he's dealing with, openly dating the dean's daughter, like, she _knows_ that's got to be happening, even if he never tells her about it. But it just - makes her sad, is the thing, because she'd wanted it to be...different, and maybe it was a silly, romantic kind of thing, but it's not too much to expect, is it? That they could get excited about something like this, together?

The fight, when it comes, is almost a relief in that sense, because it's been building for weeks, and Clarke doesn't understand how he expects her to just sit back and let him pay for _everything,_ like it was one thing when they were first sleeping together and it was an inside joke, how Clarke would grin and slide the check over to him and he'd sigh and roll his eyes dramatically and ask if she'd really _needed_ to order the most expensive cocktail on the menu, but now it just makes her uncomfortable, that he doesn't want to split the rent, or even for her to put her name on any of the bills. Like he doesn't trust her? Like he thinks she's not mature enough? Like he's a dumbass man with dumbass ideas about gender roles? Or is it just getting _too real_ for him?

"That's bullshit and you know it," he says, and Clarke snaps back, "well it's not like I even know how you feel about me," before she can stop herself, and Bellamy jerks his head back in surprise and his face twists, and that's when it rolls over into _serious fight_ territory, because yeah, the 'I love you' issue is a total sucker punch and they both know it. (She hadn't even realized it was bugging her, is the thing. She'll feel really bad about this later.)

They spend three days stewing about it, avoiding each other during the day and falling asleep in tense silence, and that Saturday Clarke wakes up to find him gone, even though he'd told her he wasn't going into campus, and there's no note or anything, and when Clarke finally finds a short text on her phone that just says _went out, be back tonight,_ she bursts into tears in the middle of the living room.

It was so easy, and now it's so hard, and it's not like Clarke hadn't been expecting it, because she's not naive enough about relationships to think that it stays that consistently good forever, that there aren't rough patches and problems to solve and hills to climb. But it doesn't make the doubts go away, the creeping fear that maybe he hasn't said it because maybe he doesn't feel it, that he's got bigger reasons for not wanting her on the bills other than the fact that his credit is better and he doesn't want her mother's money. Everybody leaves eventually, is the thing, whether it's a physical leaving or something worse, something you can't take back, like what her mother did, like Finn, like Wells. What's the difference, after all, at the end of the day, if Clarke still ends up alone? You can be in the same room with a person and a billion miles away, all at the same time, and she's so terrified of that happening with Bellamy that she can hardly breathe.

His text had said "tonight," and so she doesn't expect him to come back until late, which is why she lets herself sink into her sadness, moping around the apartment and halfheartedly packing things into boxes, finally giving up around midday because she can't stop angry-crying every time she gets reminded of the fight, which is, you know, often. So of course he shows up right then, when she's curled up on the couch at the height of pathetic, pressing a wet washcloth beneath her eyes to try and get them to stop swelling and watching the most depressing episode of E.R. she could find on Netflix, because she's a masochist now, apparently.

"Fuck," he says, like he always does when he sees her cry, always cursing like he's frustrated with the world for being so shitty and making her upset. "Aw, princess, I didn't mean to do this," and he sounds so disgusted with himself that Clarke pretty much gives up on being angry right there, because what's the point.

"I was just," she says helplessly, "you were gone, and I - "

"I went to talk to O," he says, and tosses his keys on the table and sinks down onto the couch next to her, "don't cry, please, I hate it when you cry," and Clarke tosses the washcloth away and crawls into his lap because it's been three days since he's touched her and she's sad and she deserves a fucking hug, okay.

"What'd she tell you," Clarke mumbles, and Bellamy rubs her back with his big hands and says, "to apologize, of course, what else," and Clarke curls in a little closer and breathes in his cologne and allows herself to feel relieved, to let the ugliness of the past few days melt away with every firm, soothing stroke of his palms.

"I am sorry," he says, after a long minute, and Clarke nods and opens her mouth to say it back, but he talks over her before she has a chance. "It's not any of that shit you were saying, though, I can't believe you'd think that. If I've done something to make you think that you need to tell me," and Clarke pulls away and sits up, because she needs to see his face, for this.

"I love you," she tells him, and feels him startle beneath her body, "and I got freaked out because it's been a really long month, and we hadn't said it yet, and you seemed like you were - I know it wasn't _because_ of me, but sometimes I just - "

"It wasn't because of you, it's never because of you," Bellamy says, and Clarke closes her eyes, ducks her head, "I mean - _sometimes_ it's because of you, like when you go for days drinking nothing but instant coffee and Diet Pepsi, that stresses me out a lot, but - " and Clarke laughs in surprise, swiping weakly at his shoulder. "It's just, you know, work and shit. I didn't mean to make you think I wasn't in this, because I am. I _am,_ Clarke."

Clarke slides back down against his chest, thinking about the bookshelves - two entire rungs, plus a corner of his desk, both the one here _and_ at his office at school, where he keeps novels for her to read when she waits for him to be done with office hours, and she doesn't know how she forgot about that. "I know."

"And I - uh. You know that I - "

"Shh," Clarke says, because no, he doesn't have to say it. She doesn't need it until he's ready, it won't mean anything, until he's ready. "It's fine. Don't - that's not why I said it. I'm sorry too, it's okay," and Bellamy grips the back of her neck and breathes against her temple, deep and even, like he's trying to calm himself down. He was upset too, she realizes with sudden, belated clarity, and waits until he sounds normal again to stand up and take him by the hand. "Come on. Sleep. We're going to sleep now."

"It's like two in the afternoon," he says, but lets her lead him into the bedroom anyway, and Clarke squints up at him and notices how strained his movements are, the deep bags beneath his eyes.

"Well, who cares? I don't," Clarke replies, and pulls him down into the sheets, pulling the comforter up and over and around. "Call it a nap, if you're so worried."

"Sure," Bellamy replies, and pulls her closer, presses his face into her hair, and says, "we'll put your name on the lease, if you want. Your lease, my bills," and Clarke reaches out and grabs his hand, thinking, _I made a good choice here, yeah, it'll be okay._

"Sounds like a plan to me," she says, and falls asleep, thinking about a breadmaker for the kitchen, maybe. They'd probably get a lot of use out of something like that.


End file.
